Hussain Shahzad... A Star Is Born

November 28, 2019

Hussain Shahzad... A Star Is Born

Over the last year I have had two good friends say they didn’t think much of O’Pedro when they went there in its first year. Both are writers I respect, and experts on Goan food. They both felt that the food wasn’t authentically Goan. I implored both to go and give it another shot and look at O’Pedro not as a Goan restaurant but as a Goa-inspired restaurant, a place where Chef Hussain Shahzad explores and takes inspiration from Goa’s diverse heritage... Catholic, Portuguese and Konkani, to create something stunningly new and original. To look at Hussain as a chef cooking Goan food is like looking at Prateek Sadhu as a Kashmiri chef. Don’t go there to eat what is familiar but go there to find that magical place where the familiar meets the unfamiliar, where cultures connect, where heritage meets imagination, where art is created and born.

Most of all I said go for Hussain. I remember the early days of Indian Accent at the Manor Hotel, of Masque when it first opened, of Bomras when it was seen as another Candolim roadside shack. Very few people realised it in the early days, but we were seeing some of India’s greatest ever chefs begin to find their fullest expression. Eating with Hussain took me back to those early days, the first chef in a long time to make me feel that way.

I have said for a while that Hussain is the most talented young chef in India. I go to O’Pedro more often than almost any other restaurant in India to try the new dishes created by Hussain’s fertile imagination. He has a skill with pork that only the great Gresham Fernandes can surpass. Unlike the pretenders flaunting a few weeks staging at Noma he rarely talks about a year spent working at Eleven Madison Park, also a winner of the World's Hundred Best Restaurants. He is humble and hungry, inventive and disciplined, technically sound and always open to learning. He has always had what it takes to climb into the highest echelons of India’s culinary scene.

No longer.

Because the meal I ate at O’Pedro this week was not a meal cooked by India’s most talented young chef but one of India’s greatest chefs, comparable to anyone in the vanguard of Indian cooking. Hussain Shehzad can no longer be looked at from the perspective of age and potential because his brilliance needs recognition in this very moment.

This week I ate what I felt was among the best meals I have ever had in this country. A meal that elevates him into the stratosphere inhabited by less than 7-8 chefs in India.

Probably the best Octopus I've ever had

I had 9 dishes without a single wrong note, without a single moment of dissonance. I would give every dish at least a 7 or 8. But even in the middle of all this brilliance there were moments that stood out. There was an octopus that is probably the best octopus I’ve ever had, with depth of flavour and texture, no hint of rubberiness, almost meaty in its consistency and soaking in the flavour of the potato mayonnaise, a remarkable achievement even when cooking regular meat and fish, leave alone octopus.

Of course, I’ve only had octopus less than twenty times in my life so some might say that Hussain had a one in twenty shot at cooking the best Octopus I’ve ever had. Sure he was competing against chefs in Tokyo and Madrid and Barcelona and San Francisco but statistically it’s possible.

Scrambled eggs on the other hand I’ve probably had close to a thousand times. In over thirty countries. In hundreds of cities. It is the litmus test for any cook who dreams of becoming a chef and it still amazes me how many chefs get it wrong. Too dry. Too under salted. Too overgarnished. Too basic. Too pretentious. There are many ways of getting scrambled eggs wrong.

Undoubtedly the best scrambled eggs I've ever had...
anywhere in the world

This week Hussain cooked the best scrambled eggs I have ever eaten in my life. A dish from Southern Portugal, he made it with 3 kinds of tomatoes, perfectly shaped runny yolks, oregano olive oil and while we often talk about how a dish sings out, this wasn’t a song but a whole damn orchestra. There was sweetness and salt, there was the liquid creaminess of the yolk and the buttery creaminess of the white with the tomatoes, there was the smooth acidity of the olive oil and the freshness of the oregano. It was pure sensual indulgence would be like describing a concerto as a song.

The crust layering the fish in the ceviche is inspired by rava fried fish

I have loved Hussain’s take on the ceviche.

I think he does vegetables in way that astounds me with their simplicity and clean, fresh flavours as well as the sophistication of thought and imagination.

He does pork like he was an asador in the Basque Country reincarnated in Chennai.

All this makes him an excellent chef.

But the scrambled eggs. That’s the dish that makes him a superstar.

Go and eat it folks. Because in a few short years you’ll be able to read about Hussain in some global magazine and turn to your friends and say “you know what... I was there when a star was born”.

I ate:

Red Snapper Ceviche with tamarind and chilli broth inspired by fried fish in Goa. He created a crust to remind us of rava fried fish and this was a masterpiece of flavour and texture.